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A Dignified Warrior for Peace: Nelson Mandela

Sunday, December 8, 2013

My heart is heavy. The braided life of pain, joy,
courage, strength and love – indeed, all that was the brilliant complex persona
of Nelson Mandela is no more. Mandela is the most significant public intellectual
of my lifetime. He spoke to the many threads of my identity – my
Caribbean/African intellectual roots, the historical realities of all Africa’s
children labouring to make visible the continuing realities of a formal
colonialism largely seen as past, my aspirations for a deeply meaningful life
in the law and all my hope for the full realization of Black/African
empowerment in my lifetime.

Mandela demonstrated that spiritual politics is not mere
rhetoric. It can transform the world. He demonstrated without equivocation that
civility, dignity and leadership were indigenous to Africa. He ushered in a
model for transitional governance rooted in the South African philosophical
ethic of Ubuntu of his
forefathers/mothers. In this effort, he joined in solidarity with fellow
activists including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The South African Truth and
Reconciliation (TRC) is the aspirational model for non-violent change echoed
and desired by many around the world.

One need only read Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow and the Limits of Forgiveness in
the New South Africa, to realize the complexity of the model. Most importantly,
the TRC made the history of South African Black peoples one that could be
internalized and claimed by White South Africans estranged, deformed and
sometimes yearning through the corruption that was apartheid. As she said in
her closing poem, speaking to and about the TRC participants:

Because
of you

This
country no longer lies

Between
us but within

The TRC was a public act of acknowledgement and
contrition divorced from any South African state desire to be absolved of legal
liability. This came later under other leadership. It was a shining beacon of
governance by example. We were witness to forgiveness, as political method, raw
and true. South Africans from diverse communities, came together in the
fullness of their imperfect humanity.
This moment required trust. Trust in their hearts’ yearning for peace.
Trust in their spiritual imagination. Trust in their leader, Mandela. Mandela’s
generosity of spirit upon his release was rooted within Ubuntu. He had already shown them the path through his own grace
upon his release from captivity. Through their participation in the TRC, South
Africans embraced their leader and sought to succor him while seeking to
alleviate their own pain.

There is absolutely no doubt that Nelson Mandela was
extraordinary. In a world where the cult of personality often reduces the
actions of individuals to content-less fodder for the infotainment industry –
he stood alone. The joy and admiration in his presence and words transcended
race, class, age, gender and nation state boundaries. All the boundaries that
divide us became ephemera. He was not simply charismatic. He was loved. Loved
by his country(wo)men and embraced by the world. His words and actions transformed
international governance, as the leaders of the world saw a reflection of
themselves as whole souled. For those moments, they were willing to see
themselves through the eyes of this unique man, a Black man – a man they wished
to emulate.

Mandela’s entire public life was a political call for
action. As the elder statesman of the African continent, he sought to harness
the collaborative potential of its disparate nations. He sought to empower and
galvanize the African Union as a platform for Africa’s control of its
continental politics. Today, the same world leaders who rise to applaud
Mandela, the icon, remain reluctant to take political direction from Mandela,
the African statesman. There was no risk to Western nations in condemning
apartheid but there is risk and a conflict of interest in redressing the
economic power imbalance between the African continent and the West. There has
been an almost total failure by Western nations to critically evaluate and
account for the practices of their institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and
WTO that consciously maintain the economic subordination of Africa and other
nations from the South. There is continued resistance to acknowledge the
entitlement of Africa’s multiplicity of nations to equality in the community of
nations. The missionary ethic of “rescue” remains, albeit with a shrinking of
the alms provided. Mandela’s continental and international leadership in this area
is far less comfortable a topic at this moment of mourning.

There is a dangerous seduction in the emphasis of Western
leaders on the legacy of Mandela post-release. The man of ideas formed through
a crucible of pain is seen in an almost ahistorical manner. His admirable
endpoint can easily become a blunt instrument to disempower Black struggle just
as easily as he can be a marker of Black contribution to global public life.
For how would a young Mandela fare if born today? Would the purpose underlying
his militancy have been sufficient to transcend the label of terrorist? Would
he still serve a lengthy incarceration on Robben Island now comforted by the companionship
of Guantanamo? Would neoliberal trade interests in economic relations with the South
African state have cloaked apartheid in the name of amoral capitalism? What of the funding of anti-apartheid
activities by those of us abroad – terrorist financing or solidarity? Perhaps
in grief, I become fanciful. Yet, I fear that we are best at recognizing the
fully formed and verified activist and have very little capacity to recognize
them in political utero.

Similarly, we crave peace and appropriately celebrate our
unique warrior peacemakers. Mandela was such a man. There is a caution. There
is a state interest in raising on high our peacemakers while incarcerating or
stigmatizing those who engage in direct struggle. We have seen how functional
amnesia about the political history of Black liberation has resulted in the blunting
of Martin Luther King Jr.’s politics, Frantz Fanon reduced to a few aphorisms
and no recollection of the contribution of giants such as CLR James to the
liberation struggles in Africa, America and the Caribbean. The personal history
of Mandela, the warrior, that inspires many, can become a toothless Hallmark
card sentiment, in the hands of states driven to contain and derail the
equality struggles of those they oppress. Mandela’s extraordinary transcendence
as a man of peace must not be manipulated to become a weapon of judgement used
against Black/African peoples, particularly our youth, who today continue to
labour after him. “Lest we forget” is a sentiment that applies to many
communities. It should be a call to arms for those of us mourning Mandela’s
passing today.

Mandela embodied our dignity as Black peoples. Through
every action, he made our history of racism present and our possibility to
transcend the stigmata of race/racism, real.
It is so very true that Mandela is responsible for catalyzing tremendous
change within and outside South Africa. Yet in 2013, Black peoples are
vulnerable in every part of the world in which they live. From a Pan-Africanist
perspective we are Black/African peoples in grave danger. My pain has been
compounded as I watch world leaders genuinely mourning him while failing to see
the Black/African peoples within their own body politic. They speak of his
legacy of change while failing to account for the destruction of the mechanisms
such as untied aid and robust human rights instruments that would ensure the
dignity and equality of the Black and other racialized peoples in their
midst. Borders become more impenetrable.
Black flesh consumed during slavery is no longer as appealing as Africa’s rich resources.
The rapacious hunger of over-development fueling Europe and America continues
unabated. Wilfully blind they speak. I wait for them to act.

Hearts don’t break but they can be bruised and battered.
Mandela wove us together as a global community. A unique and powerful thread
has snapped. Our intimacy transmuted into a collective wail … who, how, when?
Who will replace the irreplaceable and lead us to a place where we transcend
our differences? How will we sustain and advance his legacy of spiritual
politics? When will we truly be free? In
this place of pain and unknowing, we risk the narrowing of Mandela’s vision.
Ultimately, we can all choose to be a living legacy – to break cycles, to
sacrifice individual retribution for the greater community and to always live
in hope.